New Signs Show Gop Isn`t Just Whistling Dixie

August 21, 1987|By Michael Kilian, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — Back in the Abraham Lincoln days, mention of the Republican Party was enough to get one tarred and feathered south of the Mason-Dixon Line, which incidentally runs north of the Illinois River. But now the GOP is making a big push to make itself the Party of Dixie, to the extent of going to New Orleans for its 1988 convention and to redesigning its logo to appeal to the South.

As bubbly GOP National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. effervescently put it: ``Our candidate will have the backing of the most enthusiastic and dedicated corps of Republican volunteers ever. And he will be able to make his nomination pitch right here, in the Superdome of this supercity of the South. This is a new South, with skyscrapers that rise clear up to the 21st Century. And today there is a renewed Republican Party, a party of growth, opportunity and optimism.``

Okay, but how does the new South-oriented GOP logo differ from the old one? It features a star-spangled elephant in profile, just like its predecessor, but big bites seem to have been taken out of it on its head and tail ends (to make the pachyderm`s back resemble the distinctive Superdome`s profile). Or does this mean it`s proclaiming itself the party of the center?

Does that play in Pascagoula?

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Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole is attracting more and more heavy movers to his incipient presidential campaign. Erstwhile super-diplomat turned Wall Street money mastermind Thomas Enders has signed on to raise the big bucks for the Dole effort, and Chicago socialite Sugar Rautbord is the hostess for a money luncheon featuring Elizabeth Dole, otherwise known as secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, in Chicago in early October. Sugar

(that`s what everybody calls her) also is a friend of Sen. John Warner (R., Va.) and Lt. Col. Ollie North, whatever that means.

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Sen. Dole, incidentally, has just been elected to the International Platform Association`s Orators Hall of Fame, though doubtless not for the pineapple, farmer and bunny jokes he told over and over during his less than triumphant 1976 vice presidential campaign.

The IPA, headquartered in Winnetka, Ill., probably is less famous than Dole, but its previous inductees to the Orators Hall of Fame have included Winston Churchill, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Rev. Billy Graham, Great Communicator Ronald Reagan, Walter Cronkite, Mohandas Gandhi and Pope John Paul II. However, Dole was beaten out for tops on the 156-year-old IPA lecture circuit list by South Africa`s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and he also got nudged by ABC-TV ``Nightline`` anchorman Ted Koppel. IPA members must stay up late.

U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.), who also has made clear his interest in a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington address, is making all manner of efforts to attract press attention to said interest. But he probably ought to seek the public relations counsel of his colleague Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.), veteran patriarch of two mass-media Kennedy weddings last summer. One joined TV celeb Maria Shriver and ``Conan the Barbarian`` star Arnold Schwarzenegger; the other Caroline Kennedy and arts notable Edwin Schlossberg. The press was accorded pretty much free rein and run at the two Kennedy nuptials, but the press coverage of the marriage of Simon`s daughter Sheila to Perry Knop next month in Carbondale is about as wide open as one of Adm. John Poindexter`s staff meetings.

The Sept. 11 wedding rehearsal is closed to the press. The following post-rehearsal barbecue is open to the Fourth Estate, but the newsies get thrown out at 9 p.m. There is a ``press welcome`` at the church the next morning, but the press is barred from the wedding ceremoney. The press is welcome at the ``post wedding`` outside the church, but is barred from the wedding reception at nearby Makanda, Ill. For presidential campaign writers used to the good life in New Hampshire`s Wayfarer Inn and New York`s Plaza Hotel, where Walter Mondale and Gary Hart supporters were wining and dining in 1984, Makanda might not hold out that much appeal anyway.

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U.S. Sen. Robert Kasten (R., Wis.), arch foe of Japanese-printed Washington postcards displaying the capital`s Iwo Jima Monument and foreign-made American pizza cheese, has been pleased to discover that the American Meat Institute`s ``no name`` hot dog actually is made in America. The institute sponsors an annual hot dog lunch in the Capitol to remind members of Congress about the joys of America`s favorite and first fast food. But the manufacture of said dogs is kept anonymous, lest a senator representing the state of Oscar Meyer be offended by a wiener made in, say, the state of Hebrew National. Kasten says the ``no name`` dogs actually are made in Pennsylvania, which is better than in Taiwan, where the dogs might really be dogs.